Hobbit

Hobbits or Halflings are a fictional human-like race in the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien, about half the height of humans. They live barefooted, and live in underground houses which have windows, as they are typically built into the sides of hills.

For other uses, see Hobbit (disambiguation).

Hobbit
Middle-earth race
A hobbit
Also known asHalflings, Periannath
First appearanceThe Hobbit
Created byJ. R. R. Tolkien
Information
Home worldMiddle-earth
CapitalMichel Delving
Base of operationsThe Shire, Bree
Sub-racesHarfoots, Fallowhides, Stoors
LanguageWestron
LeadersThain; Mayor of the Shire
Notable membersBilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Meriadoc Brandybuck, Peregrin Took

Hobbits first appeared in the 1937 children's novel The Hobbit, whose titular hobbit is the protagonist Bilbo Baggins, who is thrown into an unexpected adventure involving a dragon. In its sequel, The Lord of the Rings, the hobbits Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Pippin Took, and Merry Brandybuck are primary characters. Hobbits are briefly mentioned in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, which are set in the same fictional world, Middle-earth. The origins of the name "hobbit" have been debated; literary antecedents include Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt, and Edward Wyke Smith's 1927 The Marvellous Land of Snergs. There is a disputed connection with old names for ghostly creatures, which include boggles, hobbits, and hobgoblins. There is a better substantiated one with rabbit, since Bilbo is repeatedly compared to one in The Hobbit; the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey identifies five parallels between hobbit and rabbit.

According to the prologue to The Lord of the Rings, hobbits are "relatives"[T 1] of the race of Men. Elsewhere, Tolkien describes hobbits as a "variety"[T 2] or separate "branch"[T 3] of humans. Hobbits and other races seem aware of the similarities (hence the colloquial terms "Big People" and "Little People" used in Bree). However, hobbits considered themselves a separate people.[T 4] At the time of the events in The Lord of the Rings, hobbits lived in the Shire and in Bree in the north west of Middle-earth.

Origins
Further information: Hobbit (word)

Tolkien claimed that he started The Hobbit suddenly, without premeditation, in the midst of grading a set of student essay exams, writing on a blank piece of paper: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit".[1][2]

Fictional etymology

Tolkien has King Théoden of Rohan say "the Halflings, that some among us call the Holbytlan".[T 5] Tolkien set out a fictional etymology for the word "hobbit" in an appendix to The Lord of the Rings, that it was derived from holbytla (plural holbytlan),[T 6] meaning "hole-builder". This was Tolkien's own new construction from Old English hol, "a hole or hollow", and bytlan, "to build".[3][4][5]

In English literature

The term "hobbit" however has real antecedents in modern English. One is a fact that Tolkien admitted:[6] the title of Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt, about a "complacent American businessman" who goes through a journey of some kind of self-discovery, facing "near-disgrace; the critic Tom Shippey observes that there are some parallels here with Bilbo's own journey.[4]

According to a letter from Tolkien to W. H. Auden, one "probably .. unconscious" inspiration was Edward Wyke Smith's 1927 children's book The Marvellous Land of Snergs.[T 7] Tolkien described the Snergs as "a race of people only slightly taller than the average table but broad in the shoulders and [who] have the strength of ten men."[7]

Another possible origin emerged in 1977 when the Oxford English Dictionary announced that it had found the source that it supposed Tolkien to have used: J. Hardy wrote in his 1895 The Denham Tracts, Volume 2: "The whole earth was overrun with ghosts, boggles ... hobbits, hobgoblins." The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that the list was, however, of ghostly creatures without bodies, nothing like Tolkien's solid flesh-and-blood hobbits.[4]

Rabbit

An additional connection is with rabbit, one that Tolkien "emphatically rejected",[4] although the word appears in The Hobbit in connection with other characters' opinions of Bilbo in several places.[8] Bilbo compares himself to a rabbit when he is with the eagle that carries him; the eagle, too, tells Bilbo not to be "frightened like a rabbit".[4] The giant bear-man Beorn teases Bilbo and jokes that "little bunny is getting nice and fat again", while the dwarf Thorin shakes Bilbo "like a rabbit".[4]

Shippey writes that rabbit is not a native English species, but was deliberately introduced in the 13th century, and has become accepted as a local wild animal. Shippey compares this "situation of anachronism-cum-familiarity" with the lifestyle of the hobbit, giving the example of smoking "pipeweed". He argues that Tolkien did not want to write "tobacco", as it did not arrive until the 16th century, so Tolkien invented a calque made of English words.[4] Donald O'Brien notes, too, that Aragorn's description of Frodo's priceless mithril mail-shirt, "here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in", is a "curious echo"[8] of the English nursery rhyme "To find a pretty rabbit-skin to wrap the baby bunting in."[8]

Tom Shippey's analysis of the parallels between "Hobbit" and "Rabbit"[4]
Feature"Hobbit""Rabbit"
NeologismTolkien, 19371398 (OED)
EtymologyDoubtful, see textUnknown before Middle English
Familiar
Anachronism		Smokes "pipeweed", but
tobacco did not arrive
until 16th century		Introduced species
but accepted as native
AppearanceSmall, plump(and also edible)
NameCalled "rabbit" by Bert the troll, eagle;
called "little bunny" by Beorn		(both are common names)

Appearance

In the prologue to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes that hobbits are between two and four feet (0.61–1.22 m) tall, the average height being three feet six inches (107 cm). They dress in bright colours, favouring yellow and green. Nowadays (according to Tolkien's fiction), they are usually shy, but are nevertheless capable of great courage and amazing feats under the proper circumstances. They are adept at throwing stones. For the most part, they cannot grow beards, but a few of the race of Stoor can. Their feet are covered with curly hair (usually brown, as is the hair on their heads) with leathery soles, so hobbits hardly ever wear shoes. The race's average life expectancy is 100 years. Two hobbits, Bilbo Baggins and the Old Took, are described as living to the age of 130 or beyond, though Bilbo's long lifespan owes much to his possession of the One Ring. Hobbits are considered to "come of age" on their 33rd birthday, so a 50-year-old hobbit would be regarded as entering middle-age.[T 8]

Hobbits are not quite as stocky as the similarly-sized dwarves, but still tend to be stout, with slightly pointed ears. Tolkien does not describe hobbits' ears in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, but in a 1938 letter to his American publisher, he described them as having "ears only slightly pointed and 'elvish'".[T 9] Tolkien describes hobbits thus:

I picture a fairly human figure, not a kind of 'fairy' rabbit as some of my British reviewers seem to fancy: fattish in the stomach, shortish in the leg. A round, jovial face; ears only slightly pointed and 'elvish'; hair short and curling (brown). The feet from the ankles down, covered with brown hairy fur. Clothing: green velvet breeches; red or yellow waistcoat; brown or green jacket; gold (or brass) buttons; a dark green hood and cloak (belonging to a dwarf).[T 9]

Types

Originally, there were three types of hobbits, with different physical characteristics and temperaments: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides.[T 10]

The Harfoots were the most numerous group of hobbits and were the first to enter Eriador. They were the smallest in stature, and the most typical of the race as described in The Hobbit. They lived in holes, or smials, and had closer relations with Dwarves than did other hobbits. Tolkien coined the term as analogous to "hairfoot".[T 10]

The Stoors were the second most numerous group of hobbits and the last to enter Eriador. They were stockier than other hobbits. They had an affinity for water, dwelt mostly beside rivers, and were the only hobbits to use boats and swim. Males were able to grow beards. Tolkien says they were "less shy of Men". Many hobbits of Buckland and the Marish in the Shire were Stoors, as were Déagol and Sméagol/Gollum.[T 11] Tolkien used the Old English word stor or stoor, meaning "strong".[T 10][9]

The Fallohides were the least numerous group and the second group to enter Eriador. They were generally fair-haired and tall (for hobbits). They preferred the forests and had links with the Elves, and were more adventurous than the other breeds. Wealthy prominent families, like the Tooks and Brandybucks, tended to be of Fallohide descent. Bilbo and three of the four principal hobbit characters in The Lord of the Rings (Frodo, Pippin, and Merry) had Fallohide blood through their common ancestor, the Old Took. Tolkien created the name from the archaic meanings of English words "fallow" and "hide", meaning "pale skin".[T 10]

Lifestyle and culture
Hobbit holes or smials as depicted in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy

In his writings, Tolkien depicted hobbits as fond of an unadventurous, bucolic and simple life of farming, eating, and socializing, although capable of defending their homes courageously if the need arises. They would enjoy six meals a day, if they could get them.[T 8] They claimed to have invented the art of smoking pipe-weed.[T 12] They were extremely "clannish" and had strong "predilections for genealogy"; accordingly, Tolkien included several hobbit family trees in The Lord of the Rings.[10]

The hobbits of the Shire developed the custom of giving away gifts on their birthdays, instead of receiving them, although this custom was not universally followed among other hobbit cultures or communities.[11] They use the term mathom for old and useless objects, which are invariably given as presents many times over, or are stored in a museum (mathom-house).[T 8]

The hobbits had a distinct calendar: every year started on a Saturday and ended on a Friday, with each of the twelve months consisting of thirty days. Some special days did not belong to any month—Yule 1 and 2 (New Year's Eve & New Years Day) and three Lithedays in mid-summer. Every fourth year there was an extra Litheday, most likely as an adaptation, similar to a leap year, to ensure that the calendar remained in time with the seasons.[T 13]

Tolkien stated that he liked gardens, trees, and wearing waistcoats, just as hobbits did; he was often photographed with trees.[T 14]

Hobbits traditionally live in "hobbit-holes" or smials, underground homes found in hillsides, downs, and banks.[T 8] It has been suggested that the soil or ground of the Shire consists of loess and that this facilitates the construction of hobbit-holes.[12] Loess is a yellow soil, it causes the colour of the Brandywine River, and it was used in making the bricks at Stock, the main Shire brickyard.[13] Like all hobbit architecture, the hobbit-holes are notable for their round doors and windows.[T 8]

Tolkien likened his own tastes to those of hobbits in a 1958 letter:[T 14]

I am in fact a Hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much."[T 14]

Fictional history
Further information: The Shire

In their earliest folk tales, hobbits appear to have inhabited the Valley of Anduin, between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains. According to The Lord of the Rings, they had lost the genealogical details of how they are related to the Big People. While situated in the valley of the Anduin River, the hobbits lived close by the Éothéod, the ancestors of the Rohirrim, and this led to some contact between the two. As a result, many old words and names in "Hobbitish" are derivatives of words in Rohirric.[T 8]

The Harfoots lived on the lowest slopes of the Misty Mountains in hobbit holes dug into the hillsides. The Stoors lived on the marshy Gladden Fields where the Gladden River met the Anduin; and the Fallohides preferred to live in the woods under the Misty Mountains.[T 8]

In the Third Age, the hobbits undertook the arduous task of crossing the Misty Mountains. Reasons for this trek are unknown, but they possibly had to do with Sauron's growing power in nearby Greenwood, which later became known as Mirkwood as a result of the shadow that fell upon it during Sauron's search of the forest for the One Ring. The hobbits took different routes in their journey westward, but as they began to settle together in Bree-land, Dunland, and the Angle formed by the rivers Mitheithel and Bruinen, the divisions between the hobbit-kinds began to blur. The Tolkien critic Tom Shippey explains that the name "Angle" has a special resonance, as the name "England" comes from the Angle (Anglia) between the Flensburg Fjord and the River Schlei, in the north of Germany next to Denmark, the origin of the Angles among the Anglo-Saxons who founded England.[14]

In the year 1601 of the Third Age (year 1 in the Shire Reckoning), two Fallohide brothers named Marcho and Blanco gained permission from the King of Arnor at Fornost to cross the River Brandywine and settle on the other side. Many hobbits followed them, and most of the territory they had settled in the Third Age was abandoned. Only Bree and a few surrounding villages lasted to the end of the Third Age. The new land that they founded on the west bank of the Brandywine was called the Shire.[T 8]

Originally the hobbits of the Shire swore nominal allegiance to the last Kings of Arnor, being required only to acknowledge their lordship, speed their messengers, and keep the bridges and roads in repair. During the final fight against Angmar at the Battle of Fornost, the hobbits maintain that they sent a company of archers to help but this is nowhere else recorded. After the battle, the kingdom of Arnor was destroyed, and in the absence of the king, the hobbits elected a Thain of the Shire from among their own chieftains.[T 8]

The first Thain of the Shire was Bucca of the Marish, who founded the Oldbuck family. However, the Oldbuck family later crossed the Brandywine River to create the separate land of Buckland and the family name changed to the familiar "Brandybuck". Their patriarch then became Master of Buckland. With the departure of the Oldbucks/Brandybucks, a new family was selected to have its chieftains be Thain: the Took family (Pippin Took was son of the Thain and would later become Thain himself). The Thain was in charge of Shire Moot and Muster and the Hobbitry-in-Arms, but as the hobbits of the Shire generally led entirely peaceful, uneventful lives the office of Thain came to be seen as something of a formality.[T 8]

Moral significance

The Tolkien critic Paul H. Kocher notes that Tolkien's literary techniques require readers to view hobbits as like humans, especially when placed under moral pressure to survive a war that threatens to devastate their land.[15] Frodo becomes in some ways the symbolic representation of the conscience of hobbits, a point made explicitly in the story "Leaf by Niggle" which Tolkien wrote at the same time as the first nine chapters of The Lord of the Rings.[16] Niggle is a painter struggling against the summons of death to complete his one great canvas, a picture of a tree with a background of forest and distant mountains. He dies with the work incomplete, undone by his imperfectly generous heart: "it made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything". After discipline in Purgatory, however, Niggle finds himself in the very landscape depicted by his painting which he is now able to finish with the assistance of a neighbour who obstructed him during life. The picture complete, Niggle is free to journey to the distant mountains which represent the highest stage of his spiritual development.[T 15] Thus, upon recovery from the wound inflicted by the Witch-King of Angmar on Weathertop, Gandalf speculates that the hobbit Frodo "may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can".[17] Similarly, as Frodo nears Mount Doom he casts aside weapons and refuses to fight others with physical force: "For him struggles for the right must hereafter be waged only on the moral plane."[17]

In culture

Dungeons & Dragons began using the name halfling as an alternative to hobbit for legal reasons.[18][19] "halfling" comes from the Scots word hauflin, meaning an awkward rustic teenager who is neither man nor boy, and so half of both. This usage of the word pre-dates both The Hobbit and Dungeons & Dragons.[20]

Comic horror rock band Rosemary's Billygoat recorded a song and video called "Hobbit Feet", about a man who takes a girl home from a bar only to discover she has horrifying "hobbit feet". According to lead singer Mike Odd, the band received over 100 pieces of hate mail from angry Tolkien fans.[21]

The skeletal remains of several diminutive paleolithic hominids were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. These tiny people, named Homo floresiensis after the island on which the remains were found,[22] were informally dubbed "hobbits"[23] by their discoverers in a series of articles published in the scientific journal Nature.[24] The excavated skeletons reveal a hominid that (like a hobbit) grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child and had proportionately larger feet than modern humans.[25]

gollark: How?
gollark: muahaha my brotlipython™ script is still smaller.
gollark: I mean, "shellscript" is overselling it.
gollark: That's a shellscript. It will not randomly execute stuff on stdout.
gollark: > You should hide the pipe to python within the codeWhat?

References

Primary
This list identifies each item's location in Tolkien's writings.
  1. The Fellowship of the Ring, Prologue. "It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement, hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. [...] But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered."
  2. Tolkien 1975, Firstborn
  3. Carpenter 1981, Letter 131 to Milton Waldman, late 1951
  4. The Fellowship of the Ring. Many Meetings. "If you can't distinguish between a Man and a Hobbit, your judgement is poorer than I imagined. They're as different as peas and apples."
  5. The Two Towers, book 3, ch. 8 "The Road to Isengard"
  6. The Return of the King, Appendix F, 2. "On Translation", "Note on three names: Hobbit, Gamgee, and Brandywine"
  7. Carpenter 1981, Letter 163 to W. H. Auden, 7 June 1955
  8. The Fellowship of the Ring, "Prologue", 1. "Concerning Hobbits"
  9. Carpenter 1981, letter 27, specifically about Bilbo Baggins
  10. Tolkien 1975
  11. Unfinished Tales, part 3, ch. 4 "The Hunt for the Ring", note 9
  12. The Fellowship of the Ring, "Prologue", 2. "Concerning Pipe-weed"
  13. The Return of the King, Appendix D
  14. Carpenter 1981, Letter 213 to Deborah Webster, 25 October 1958
  15. Tolkien, J. R. R. Leaf by Niggle. Dublin Review. 1945. January. p. 216.

Secondary
  1. Carpenter 1977, p. 172.
  2. Stanton 2013, pp. 280–282.
  3. Clark Hall 2002, pp. 63, 189.
  4. Shippey 2005, pp. 76-78.
  5. "Holbytlan: The ancient origin of the word 'Hobbit'". The Encyclopedia of Arda. 6 June 2010. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  6. "Letter to Harry C. Bauer - Tolkien Gateway". tolkiengateway.net. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
  7. Carpenter 1977, p. 165.
  8. O'Brien, Donald (15 December 1989). "On the Origin of the Name "Hobbit"". Mythlore. 16 (2): Article 19.
  9. Clark Hall 2002, p. 322.
  10. Fisher, Jason (2007). "Family Trees". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. Taylor & Francis. pp. 188–189. ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0.
  11. The hobbit Gollum refers to the One Ring as his "birthday present" in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
  12. Smalley, I. J.; Bijl, S. (2003). "Hobbit holes as loess dwellings and the Shire as a loess region". New Zealand Soil News. 51: 158–159.
  13. Smalley, I. J.; Bijl, S. (1995). "Bricks and brickmaking in the Shire". Amon Hen. 128: 18–19.
  14. Shippey 2001, pp. 198-199.
  15. Kocher 1972, p. 118.
  16. Kocher 1972, pp. 161–169. "These chapters brought Frodo and his hobbit friends as far as the inn at Bree.".
  17. Kocher 1972, p. 120.
  18. Weinstock, Jeffrey, ed. (2014). The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters. Ashgate Publishing. p. 193. ISBN 1409425622.
  19. Langford, David (2005). The Sex Column and Other Misprints. Wildside Press. p. 188. ISBN 1930997787.
  20. Tresca, Michael J. (2010). The Evolution of Fantasy Role-playing Games. McFarland. p. 36. ISBN 0786460091.
  21. Koudounaris, Paul (16 January 2013). "Rosemary's Billygoat: A Big Hairy Kick in the Behind from Hobbit Fans". LA Record.
  22. Morwood, M. J.; Soejono, R. P.; Roberts, R. G.; Sutikna, T.; Turney, C. S. M.; Westaway, K. E.; Rink, W. J.; Zhao, J.- X.; van den Bergh, G. D.; Rokus Awe Due; Hobbs, D. R.; Moore, M. W.; Bird, M. I.; Fifield, L. K. (28 October 2004). "Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia". Nature. 431 (7012): 1087–1091. doi:10.1038/nature02956. PMID 15510146.
  23. Zimmer, Carl (20 June 2016). "Are Hobbits Real?". New York Times. Retrieved 21 June 2016.
  24. Brown, P.; Sutikna, T.; Morwood, M. J.; Soejono, R. P.; Jatmiko; Wayhu Saptomo, E.; Rokus Awe Due (28 October 2004). "A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia". Nature. 431 (7012): 1055–61. doi:10.1038/nature02999. PMID 15514638.
  25. McKie, Robin (21 February 2010). "How a hobbit is rewriting the history of the human race". The Observer. Retrieved 8 January 2011.

Sources
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